


Kindness Will Be Your Undoing

by goldenteaset



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Ending, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Creepy, Dark Magic, Gen, Post-Game(s), Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-03 00:57:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19453087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenteaset/pseuds/goldenteaset
Summary: During the night, she feels something cold and twig-like brush against her mouth.





	Kindness Will Be Your Undoing

**Author's Note:**

> While it would be good for Six to be able to return to the surface safely, that one trophy had me curious. (And hey, it was nice writing for this fandom again!) Regarding the rating: unlike previous Little Nightmares fics I've written, the violence here is more up-front but not to a _super_ gory degree.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Little Nightmares. The title of this fic comes from the trophy you get after Six eats the nome.

It’s been a day since Six left the Maw, and she’s already growing weary of this new boat. After spending so much time in sprawling expanses of metal and darkness, this fishing schooner is…cramped, to say the least.

She’s taken care to memorize the area. On the deck, spot on the left side sinks slightly if she leans forward, and below-deck, it smells of rusted metal and fishy ice. The ship’s white material (metal or plastic, she isn’t sure) gleams in the sun, hot enough to burn her eyes and make her weep. As a result, she’s stayed below-decks for the most part, but the captain who looks as old and grizzled as a seaside cliff has promised to find her sunglasses. She hopes it’ll help.

“You’ll be home in no time,” the captain reassures her, his voice almost as raspy and worn as Six’s. His gap-toothed smile is shockingly genuine, after what she’s been through. 

This is a family-owned ship, and according to the captain’s dreamy-eyed son they’ve been in the lobster-trapping business for decades. They’ll be meeting another ship in three days, since they found Six and need to bring her to safety.

Six can’t talk about the Maw—literally. Each time she tries, phlegm clogs up her throat and she’s forced to cough like she’s about to choke, until she can’t remember what she was going to say. _Maybe that’s for the best. These people are living a nice, simple life; they don’t need to know about something that dangerous._

_They don’t need to know their lobster traps can hold something even more precious._

\---

After meeting the captain and his crew, she spends her time in her little cabin, sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. She didn’t realize how tired she was until her head hit the thin pillow, and she let the rolling, lolling waves sing her to sleep.

During the night, she feels something cold and twig-like brush against her mouth. Half dreaming, she pushes it away.

It comes again, near dawn: that same icy tickle against her mouth. It doesn't leave as easily this time, but a shove with her shadow gets the job done. She's getting used to this power; perhaps it will truly be hers one day.

Her rest is uneasy, full of The Lady’s voice and face, but it’s still rest.

\---

When she awakes, facing the window, she catches sight of a hooked lobster-trap jerking free of the briny waves, the lobster still chewing on the scrap of bait. Her heart sinks, and she feels her shadows’ lukewarm-yet-comforting embrace. She runs her fingers across the tendrils and smiles at the ticklish sensation that follows.

She hears something underneath her thin bed. It’s a delicate, prickling noise, made by something very small.

It sounds familiar.

Six kicks off her meager blanket. Heedless of the blood rushing to her head, she peers over the side of the bed. Through the distracting, swirling haze, she squints into the darkness then draws it back like a curtain. She takes it into herself, as she would a cup of water, and the darkness settles in her belly and sloshes about.

_Ah, now I can see._

Beneath her bed, there’s a ratty little pointed hat, and a nome beneath it.

Six briefly recalls the nome she ate in the Maw, before her final fight—but there are so many of them, it was probably never discovered. _There’s nothing I can do about it, anyway. The dead can’t come back, no matter how much you want them to._

Six waves to the nome.

The nome peers up at her in silence for a moment before waving back.

She rights herself and pats the mattress invitingly, the springs sinking and rising under her hand.

She pauses, presses her palm down again. This time, the mattress feels…lumpy. Like small, clever things burrowed into the fabric and metal. Waiting their chance.

Six instinctively recoils, prepares her shadows—

—And the mattress bursts open like a spider’s egg sack.

Not just the mattress. They scurry from beneath the bed, from the shelf above the metal frame, the closet: all the places where shadows and dust congeal.

There are so many, so many. They drown the pale carpet and smother the window and swamp the bed. There’s no end to them.

Her heart doesn’t race; the rhythm remains steady. She can handle this.

Six lashes out with her shadows. They twine around tiny necks and twist until they snap. They twine against fragile bodies and bash them against the walls and ceiling, ten at a time. On and on she beats them down.

But the nomes keep coming. There are too many for her shadows to deal with.

They crawl all over her, smothering her in their Maw-stink, that eternal stench of raw meat and rusting metal, their cold, twig-like hands pawing at her nose and mouth. She tries to bite them, but they’re surprisingly strong: they wrench her mouth wide and hold it open. She can’t breathe. Her belly and throat heave, yearning to vomit.

She can’t see the nomes’ eyes, but she can hear their collective hiss of amusement as she struggles and writhes. They grab something inside, something wet, wriggling…

(Their fingers are sharp. _Scratch-scratch._ The cuts are deep.)

…And the thing in their hands tears asunder with a sharp tug.

An endless stream of burning pain. Wet metal floods her mouth. Black spots flicker before her vision—or perhaps they’re the nomes’ eyes after all.

One last thought crawls through her mind: _You're hungry too. I guess it's fair..._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :D Feedback is appreciated.


End file.
